Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Mission 2023

  Rewatched 22 Mar 2025

  The animation is so good. Beautiful, smart*, and moving.

  Watching this again, I'm less critical of John Chau than before. Sure, there's stuff to criticize--the apparent thinness of his local church commitment, his English-language "preaching" to the Sentinelese, the questionable wisdom of his entire strategy. But I'm more okay now with respecting Chau as someone who, in a flawed way, did something brave and even good. I'm more confident to pray that God would not let his death be in vain.

  *I got those allusions to Apocalypse Now, Tintin, and Narnia.

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  Phantom: The Musical 2021

  Watched 19 Mar 2025 1

  I wanted to like this better than Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, and I don't think I did. But there's a lot going on here and it's not straightforwardly worse.

  Ultimately this musical's weakness is also the source of its greatest strengths. Whereas the ALW show begins in medias res and leaves the Phantom largely shrouded in mystery, this musical follows Christine as she becomes an opera singer and gives us a complete backstory for Erik. The goal, I think, is…

Popular reviews

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  Hail, Caesar! 2016

  Rewatched 18 Feb 2024 2

  This time I noticed that there are *four* parallel story-telling machines: (1) religion, (2) Communism, (3) Hollywood, and (4) Lockheed Martin. (1) and (3) are shown working together, and (2) and (4) are symbiotically dependent (via the logic of cold war). I also noticed the way that the film emphasizes apparent contradictions in each: God is/isn't split, man is/isn't split, the movie stars are/aren't innocent. The point is both that we need stories for our light, and also that when a story's good it unifies that which otherwise seems contradictory.

  "Are you a principal or an extra?"
  "I think a principal...."

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  La La Land 2016

  Rewatched 05 Feb 2024 6

  Me in 2018:
  "Ah, La La Land--the inspiring story of giving up on those you love in order to pursue your career!"

  Me in 2024:
  This is my third time seeing it, and after having argued with my friends after the previous two viewings I think I'm convinced that it's a film about vocation and its costs. In fact now I think I'm prepared to call the storyline brilliant. The way it subverts our expectations without dishonoring them is remarkable:…

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